


Stuaim Hiberni

by Leyenn



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:31:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Irish Diplomacy: Tell him to go to hell and make him look forward to the trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stuaim Hiberni

**Author's Note:**

> *in pidgin Gaelic, _'dexterity of the Irish'_. Set somewhere around seasons two - three.

"This is great. This is just great."

The kindling spat at her in reply, and went out.

"Xena!"

It was an absolutely dew-soaked forest night, pelting with rain in addition to the pervading boggy damp, and the thudding downpour on the hut roof - and various persistent spots on the floor - threatened to drive her mad even before she managed to contract the shaking sickness from the cold. "_Xena!_"

And then the Warrior Princess appeared in soaked leather, adorned with a fish in either hand, crouching into the dank gloom. "This is not my fault."

The Destroyer of Nations Look didn't work on a Gabrielle who was cold, hungry, beat-up, tired and dripped on.

"This is all your fault." She was not about to be swayed by the promise of a trout dinner. Especially with their current lack of anything even slightly related to a fire.

Xena extracted her fingers from two pairs of mangled gill slits. "I just said-"

"Yes, we all know what you said." She drew her knees up to her chest again. "You said all the things that got us stuck here, in the freezing bog forest, getting drenched, no idea where we are-"

"We're four days from the Connemare coast," was the muted reply. Xena seemed to be attempting trout sushi, the sight of which filled her with something very far from optimism. She burrowed her fingers beneath the layers heaped on her in a desperate search for her wrist.

"Oh, that's a great help."

"What did I do?!"

"You told the King of Hibernia to go to Hades, Xena." Pressed back-and-buttocks against damp, stinking wood was really becoming an unpleasant place to sit out the night. "And, when he expressed a passing unfamiliarity with our gods, you explained the phrase for him. At length. With hand signals." Her fist squeezed the closest blanket. Water seeped out. "And then - _then_ you expounded explicitly for over an hour about how he's so depraved anyway that he'd probably enjoy the trip!"

Xena regarded her for a still, dripping moment over the dead fish. "I wasn't wrong," was her only defence.

"That's not the point!"

The Warrior Pout showed its face. "Gabrielle, he was besmirching your honour."

"My honour can stand a little besmirching."

"He wanted to marry you off to that evil-minded little puss-faced son of his!"

"And if you'd let me say yes they'd have taken me to the temple or the holy spring or whatever it is they worship around here, and you'd have hopped down and knocked the ladies-in-waiting senseless, and we could have been out of there by sundown. We could have been not here. Possibly - possibly, Xena - even somewhere not here that was dry."

A drip landed on her shoulder. And another.

Another, after a second's gap. It seemed to be a new, yet chronic, problem.

She sighed and poked at the sodden ashes of what she'd hoped could be a brief cook-fire, at least. A wide rivulet of water trickled across the dirt floor down from the door arch - that it had ever had a door was doubtful - and made its way happily into her kindling pile.

She glared at the woman picking pondweed fronds from her boot-tops. "We could be eating fish that isn't more at home in our hut than we are."

"We're not eating the fish yet," Xena pointed out. "That fire was a lost cause, huh?"

Gabrielle resigned her stomach to being hungry, and tried to resign her skin to being wet and clammy - for the moment at least. There was always the possibility of the Hiberni sneaking up behind them and bashing the two of them over the head, in which case she might actually experience the joys of a dry dungeon by morning. "This entire royal forest of his wouldn't burn in this weather."

"Look at it this way: we're pretty safe here. Not even wolves could find our tracks in this."

It was the little false, bright, irritating smile that did it. She could feel the homicidal impulse building - she definitely knew what one of those felt like, and one was definitely on its way.

"Xena - get out there and find me a fire!"

There was actually a twinkle in one blue eye. "You wouldn't prefer a boat?"

"I'm going to kill you." She narrowed her eyes and poked her staff out from the dirt beside her, jabbing at a drenched leather boot.

"I really, really just want to roast you over a nice slow burning fire like a fresh trout."

Xena leered at her. "Sounds nice."

She stopped to think about it. That wasn't exactly a punishment worthy of the immensity of Xena's guilt over this. "On second thoughts, I want you to roast me over a huge, slow fire. With some nice spices. And you can feed me that fresh trout while you're going about it."

Over the dull thud of the rain there was a duller creak. Xena, ever alert, looked up: Gabrielle's buttocks were far too intimately aware of the kind of dull creak damp wood made, and she didn't.

Just as well, as half of the roof sloped its way with a rotten snap into the very centre of the hut, accompanied for good measure by a healthy waterfall of rainwater.

Xena didn't make a sound as the rooftop pool cascaded down. Something in her stance just said utter boredom as the bark-strewn water plastered hair to her face and shoulders, not even garnering a flinch. For good measure, an ecstatic worm looked to be mating with her breastplate.

And in the midst of it all, a slightly unhinged grin of feral laughter. "Do I get to eat you afterwards?"

Some days... some days there was just no getting away from the madness. She yanked the blanket up again and moved out of range of that damned drip with a smug giggle. "Get the fire started and I'll think about it."

  


*

  



End file.
